R SIG Debian - Jul 2017 - Path problem of R 3.4.1 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64bit

Hello,


In the past, R was always OK. Today, I updated R from 3.4.0 to 3.4.1 from cran
mirrors. Updating was OK, but when I started R 3.4.1, It told me it couldn't
find libraries. I installed libraries in
/home/<users>/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/. Now, if I wanna install
packages in 3.4.1, the suggested default path is 'NA' !?!?


I reinstalled R 3.4.0. All is OK. Please help!


Ling

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Hi,

2017-07-05 7:07 GMT+02:00 ? ? <kaji331 at
hotmail.com>:
>
> Hello,
>
>
> In the past, R was always OK. Today, I updated R from 3.4.0 to 3.4.1 from
cran mirrors. Updating was OK, but when I started R 3.4.1, It told me it
couldn't find libraries. I installed libraries in
/home/<users>/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/. Now, if I wanna install
packages in 3.4.1, the suggested default path is 'NA' !?!?

A quick solution is to add:

R_LIBS_USER=~/R/%p-library/%v

to your ~/.Renviron file (usually /home/your_user/.Renviron), as suggested
by https://mobile.twitter.com/henrikbengtsson/status/882386074839924736

More info is given at [1].

[1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-debian/2017-July/002727.html
>From what I can understand in [1] Dirk Eddelbuettel, the Debian Maintainer,
defends that the default should be to have a shared library of packages
among all users rather than letting each user have its own packages in
their home directory. This seems to be the default approach in other Debian
packages (e.g. `pip install` uses /usr/local/). He believes it should be
the default approach for R as well. However it seems he did not consider
the possibility that the shared library may not be writeable. In [1] he
proposed to add as a fall-back the local home directory, and I hope he
chooses to go that path in the next package version.

I don't think that leaving current users in a situation where they can't
continue installing packages (without additional actions they may not know
about) and in a situation where all their packages have "disappeared"
was
intended.

Personally, I prefer to have the packages in my home directory, to prevent
other users inadvertently updating the packages I want to use, but I
understand that my use case may not be the default one. I believe that the
current situation is the result of a bug that hopefully will be fixed in
future package versions.

Best,

Sergio

>
>
> I reinstalled R 3.4.0. All is OK. Please help!
>
>
> Ling
>
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